


Into the flames

by LittleLinor



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Darkfic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 02:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: It's been three months since the Promare left, and the Burnish are burning.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 15
Kudos: 114





	Into the flames

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god I'm sorry for this tbh, this movie gives me a nice hopeful ending and this is what I do with it??? But Lio's speech in the cave has always given me Feelings and I feel like the common headcanon of Lio joining Burning Rescue for real has some... interesting implications.  
So I went all the way with it.  
(This is a different universe from Coals, I just wanted to toy with the idea)
> 
> As a warning, this fic deals with serious self-destructive shit. Keep that in mind before reading.

It takes three months for someone to die in a fire again in the region that used to be Promepolis.  
It's the fruit of many things. Not much except rubble to burn, when so much of what was consummable has indeed been consumed, at least until people start to rebuild, from camps and corners of wrecked skyscrapers to real homes. The still-abundant fire hydrants everywhere, most of them non-functional, but still holding at least some water or artificial frost.  
A population who learned to deal with fire from the moment they could walk.  
It takes three months, because by then things are starting to get properly built again, and building means energy and fire hazards, and people aren't as careful anymore when they finally get the comfort of a proper home again after weeks in precarious situations.  
And the victim is an ex-Burnish.  
Lio looks at the one-channel news broadcast on the screen with what almost looks like nonchalance until you notice the grim light in his eyes.

“It's terrible, but… in a way, it's karma, you know?”  
It's the word on the street, the whispers that are hushed as soon as Lio or Galo get into view but never quite silenced. Galo glares, but he's learned, by now, that being too aggressive in his defense of people often only makes things worse.  
But what hurts him the most is the small melancholic smile on Lio's lips, the cold in his eyes.  
“Don't listen to them, Lio,” he tries to say, between clenched teeth because he hates it. Lio shouldn't have to cover his ears. He should not have to hide from the hate. He should not be hated in the first place.  
But Galo also knows that people are scared. He understood that the best after facing Kray. Sometimes people get so scared that they'd rather kill their own and destroy everything so they can run away rather than face themselves.  
He's always accepted that most people are smarter than him. But learning that a lot of them can't find it in themselves to face their own truths and be honest to themselves and others has been a new and hard lesson. Even in this world that they saved with love and hope, this new world that's being rebuilt, old wounds don't close that easily.  
Galo's a medic. The need, the urge to fix any wound he sees runs deep, bites into him. But you can't erase the scars of an entire world alone. Just like the actual rubble covering the world.  
Lio shakes his head, eyes closing for a short second.  
“It's fine. They're not completely wrong.”  
“Lio!”  
He steps into Lio's path. Something is _wrong_, something that twists his stomach with what feels like anger but he knows is fear. Lio looks up at him.  
“You don't actually think that,” he says, asserting, begging.  
“What makes you say that?”  
“You'd never talk like that about your people. Never. You—you always protected them. Always took it all upon yourself. Don't try to pretend you don't care about their lives, because I won't believe you.”  
Lio stares up at him, face blank. And then he smiles, and the tiredness and bitterness in it makes Galo feel sick.  
“You really are an idiot, Galo Thymos. Especially when you're right.”  
Galo stops in his tracks. Something feels like a crack, a sliver of that awful moment when his entire world was turned around. Except Lio isn't betraying him, hasn't let go of him, hasn't whispered in his ear that he's always hated him, always wanted to kill him, always seen him as weak, too inconvenient to even be a tool. But still, a fragment of that feeling breaks free and washes over him again.  
And then Lio's face softens, apologetic and almost a little helpless.  
“I care. But I can't protect them like I did anymore. I don't command a whole planet's fire anymore.”  
And there's pain in those words, and now Galo feels bad, because of _course_ he knew Lio cared, he's never actually doubted it. He doesn't know why he needed so badly to hear it, to have Lio bare himself and say it like he did.  
“… I'm sorry.”  
Lio shakes his head.  
“It's fine. There's nothing you can do about it. Or nothing I can. Even if I could still burn, I…” He trails off. “… I can protect a group from violence, if they're in one spot. I can't watch over every single person. I can't be in their head.”  
He looks up, towards the setting sun, and for one moment, he looks even more untouchable than when he formed a giant dragon's core.  
It makes Galo shiver.  
“… hey…”  
Lio looks back at him. Shakes his head.  
“Sorry. Let's go home, okay? I think I need to rest.”  
Galo can't stop himself from wrapping around him.  
“Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.”

Fires burn. So Burning Rescue fights fires.  
For Galo, it's all he's ever known. As a kid he'd always wanted to join, enough that he worked his ass off to pass the tests he needed, to learn all the medical information and skills required to get through the first aid training. It was a dream, a dream of a world, a life where he wouldn't be helpless, where he could bring both smiles and safety to others. The way it was given to him when he was so small and had lost everything.  
These mundane fires don't lash out like Burnish-controlled Promare, but they have a cruelty of their own, a cruelty that doesn't discriminate. Fire, real fire, strikes the innocents just as much as the criminals, and it stops for nothing and no one, burning until it has consumed not itself but whatever it touches.  
Galo fights. It's all he's ever known, really, but it's different now. Is it really a _fight_ when there's no opponent anymore, when the thing that's threatening to crush him and others is just a force of nature? How does one fight a power so mindless and so huge?  
But Lio steps into it with no hesitation, walking through flames like he's still made from them, like they will brush against him in welcome and leave him unharmed like they used to.  
At first, Galo fears that he's forgotten. But Lio isn't careless. Just fearless. He's been on fire for too long to be scared of the flames.  
So the two of them work, and when fires do flare up, they walk into the flames and save people. Because protecting others is what both of them have always done.

And then one day, Lio walks into the flames, and doesn't come out.  
Galo's busy helping Ignis get an oxygen mask on someone he just rescued when Aina flies over them, cycling like she does when she's agitated.  
“Galo! Where's Lio?”  
“Lio? He came out before me, he was helping that kid…”  
“He went back in.”  
Galo's heart freezes.  
“I thought he was going back to help you,” Aina continues. “But I haven't seen him come back out.”  
He's scrambled to his feet before he remembers he's still supposed to be doing something.  
Ignis lays a hand on his.  
“Go,” he says. “I'll take care of this.”  
Galo doesn't even waste time in thanking him.

The smoke inside makes the walls disappear. Galo remembers the layout from earlier, but so much is obscured now by flames and ashes, and he wouldn't be surprised if the ceiling collapsed soon.  
“Lio!”  
No answer. The roar of flames smothers him, covering the static of his communicator.  
“Lio!”  
_Where did we find that kid again?_  
It had been in one of the corridors to the left, one that connected to a lot of small rooms, like many of the poorer buildings were built these days. They'd pushed away some rubble to cross and Lio had taken the child back while Galo went after the one signature still on his radar.  
It's a bet, a chance. But he doesn't want to think about being wrong. If he doesn't follow his instinct, then where will he go? The place is huge.  
And there. As he navigates the stairs, Lio's mech pings on his radar, and Galo could cry. He rushes up the last crumbling steps, and through the corridor, and—  
The room Lio stands in is burning. And yet he doesn't move, as if transfixed by the flames, staring at the bed consuming itself like a campfire.  
“_LIO!_”  
Lio turns. There's a dog in his arms, a mask pressed to its face.  
“Galo?”  
“What the _hell_ are you doing?! Let's get out of here!”  
“… right. Is the corridor still open? I was thinking I might have to break through the window, but with this…” he says, nodding towards the dog in his arms.  
“Not for long. Come _on_!”  
Lio nods. They bolt out of the room, through the corridor, jump down the crumbling stairs. Make their way out.  
The sky is dark, and Galo can't help but stare at it. His eyes hurt so much from the light of the flames.

“I want an explanation,” Ignis says, crossing his arms as he stares Lio down. The fire is contained, for now. Not dead, but they've cut it off from any new fuel. Even if they can't put it out, it'll eat itself out soon enough.  
“That kid… he said his dog was still in the next room. We didn't see it on the scanner when we went through.”  
“And why didn't you warn anyone? You're supposed to go in in _pairs_.”  
“You all had more important things to deal with.” He sighs. “I messed up. I know. I'll accept full responsibility.”  
Ignis stares. Galo doesn't know what he's supposed to be looking at.  
“… you're off active duty for two weeks. Get some _rest_, Lio. If you make mistakes, it's everyone who gets put in danger.”  
“… I know.” He smiles again, and Galo is starting to hate it. “I know.”

“What's wrong?” he asks, later that night, straddling Lio's lap and leaning his forehead against his and keeping his arms around him, as if if he shields him between the sofa and his own body he can protect him from the world, from fire, from whatever's eating at him.  
Lio's always been on fire. But now, part of him feels like it's being consumed, and Galo can't stop dreaming of closing his arms and finding only ashes between them.  
“It's nothing,” Lio says, but when Lio takes him to bed, these days, it's like he's sating a different hunger, chasing a different kind of fight, and Galo knows him better than that.  
“Lio…”  
“… Ignis is right. I think I'm tired. I've been pushing myself too hard.” He sighs, almost like a laugh, and buries his face in Galo's shoulder, a rare, shocking display of vulnerability. “It's hard. Not knowing whether I'll be able to save everyone.”  
Galo tightens his hold.  
“… I know.”

Two weeks later, Lio goes back to work. He fights fires. He never steps into a burning building without a partner again.

The months pass. The death toll rises, slowly, but present.  
In truth, it's much less than about Everything Else. People die from heart attacks more than they die by fire, when so many of them have learned how to fight it, how to escape it. Accidents of all kinds happen, and Burning Rescue helps with those too. It's their job to save people, after all, even if it's just from falling down a collapsed wall and breaking their leg.  
But as the count rises, the statistics start coming, and with them, a trend that Galo just can't ignore.  
The Burnish are dying.

He doesn't tell Lio about it. Instead, he does what he's never done before, what he wishes he'd done with Kray, and investigates. Gets reports and records from other Burning Rescue units in other areas and goes through them, compares, writes things down. And the truth starts coming out from under the cold, administrative words and numbers.  
It's not that Burnish are starting fires and sometimes getting caught in them, like some people have taken to whispering. Of all the fires he's seen in his notes, only one has been marked as arson, and the culprit has been caught. But one by one, individual people who used to be Burnish have walked into the flames and not come out.

“Why are they burning?”  
He corners Lio when they're alone, in the semblance of safety that their small apartment gives them. Lio looks up from the eggs he was frying and slowly, deliberately, turns the stove off before facing him, silent.  
“… you know what I'm talking about, don't you?”  
It's hard not to feel hurt by it. But Galo knows that whatever reason Lio's given himself for his silence, it's to protect him. Everything has always been about protecting, with Lio.  
Even if he has to protect him from the truth.  
“… the Burnish burn. It's what we do.”  
“… but you're not Burnish anymore.”  
“We're not.” He sighs. “It'll be easier for those who awakened recently. And it'll get better one day. Eventually.”  
“… Lio, what's going on?”  
“_I can't save them, Galo!_”  
It's the first time Lio's shouted at him in that way since he crashed into him and dragged him away from Kray on the night when everything changed. And he's shaking now, shaking with anger and despair and frustration, with a darkness that Galo's been glimpsing for weeks but never really got to see until now.  
“All this time… All this time, I protected them. And now… now…”  
He shakes. Galo tries to take a step forward.  
“Lio…”  
“Burn hotter. Burn brighter. Be consumed. That's what we've always lived for. That's what we've always _been_. Do you think—just because the flames aren't in us anymore, we can just forget?”  
And then it all makes sense. Lio, trying so desperately to save everyone. Lio, sighing, telling Galo that the rumours are true, that somehow they _were_ meant to burn. _I can't watch over every single person._ Lio, standing alone in a room full of flames.  
_I can't be in their head._  
“… you too?”  
He can barely say it. His throat is tight, dry like he's been burned by smoke again.  
Lio's smile is tearful and bittersweet. And protective, still. Like it hurts him to let Galo see.  
He's known from the start. He's felt this from the _start_.  
Every time he walked into a fire, he felt the call of the flames.  
“I can't. I have to save them. We closed the door; it's my responsibility. But… it's hard, sometimes.”  
Galo doesn't even decide to move. Not really. He just does, his arms tight around Lio before he can even think of words, clinging to him, digging fingers into his arm, into his waist.  
Lio gasps, but doesn't push him away.  
Galo holds on. Like anything else will leave him with only ashes.  
How do you tell someone you love that the thing you want out of the whole world is for them to live? That you'd get burned again and again for it? That you'd rather face their pain than ever live a lie again?  
“… it'll get better,” Lio says again. “I believe it. I have to believe it.”  
His face is pressed in Galo's chest. Galo brings his hand up to cup the back of his head.  
“Stay with me,” he prays. It's all he can say, the only words that will show the truth of his heart.  
Slowly, Lio's arms stroke up his back and grip his shirt, returning the embrace with all he has.  
“I'll try.” He takes a breath, tightens his hold, squares his shoulders. “I will.”  
It's still scary. But Galo believes him. Because the Lio who would harness fire from the very core of the earth to save his people would never break a promise.  
He has to believe it.  
Lio rests his cheek against his chest, and Galo hangs on to faith.

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I'll work on something cute next. Probably. Sob.


End file.
